IBM is about to release an SDK for Mote Runner which could help turn inanimate objects in to Internet connected devices. As ZDNet’s Larry Dignan notes, the Mote Runner moniker refers to Mote’s—or wireless sensor nodes—that gather information ranging from temperature, movement and light and refer back to a network.

What does this all mean? Well on the one hand it’s sort of scary that “things” will start to become connected to the Internet. On the other hand I’d welcome a dashboard I could go to that would allow me to control all the gadgets in my world.

I saw a lot of this type of stuff many years ago at the houses where you could send an SMS to your house to have it open the door for the kids …but as prices drop on hardware and it becomes more common, the science fiction becomes more real.

There are tonnes more applications of course beyond that, monitoring pipelines, tall structures susceptible to natural disasters, or the stuff like the temperature.

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